As a new radio station for teenagers waits to discover if it has won a
prestigious award, we talk to its founders

When radio’s most familiar voices gather for the Radio Academy Awards at London’s Grosvenor House next month, few will be surprised by the shortlist. Graham Norton is up against Chris Evans, Melvyn Bragg will be hoping to beat off Victoria Derbyshire, and Frank Skinner and Nick Ferrari are both contenders.

A few rows back, Camilla Byk and Annabel Merrett will be pinching themselves. Their online radio station, Podium.me, only began broadcasting two years ago but it has now been nominated in the best creative innovation category.

The station, which exclusively broadcasts teenagers’ opinions on current affairs, was recognised by judges for presenting “the voice of the under-20s”.

“I didn’t ever think we’d get here so quickly,” confesses Mrs Byk, a mother of three. “But everything comes from a small idea.”

She dreamt up the station, which offers a variety of podcasts on current issues, after interviewing youths helping to sweep up after the riots near her home in Clapham in summer 2011. It surprised the former television producer that the camera crews were only interviewing shopkeepers and adult members of the “broom army”, so she marched up to the group of teenagers with her iPhone camera and started peppering them with questions.

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“At first they were quite reluctant,” she remembers. “I asked one of them, who was wearing a hoodie, if he wanted to say something, and he pulled it over his face and said ‘no’.”

But she persevered. “I think they probably thought they were going to get into trouble. As we got talking, I said: ‘Why do you think young people are being blamed for this?’ A 15-year-old said: ‘No one cares about what we think, no one really listens to us’.”

She took his comments seriously, and was still chewing over the conversation when she had coffee with another Clapham mother, Mrs Merrett, who also has three children, later that summer. Together, they agreed to do something about it. In less than a year, they were ready to launch Podium.me.

They wanted young people to interview people their own age, so they recruited a network of sixth formers and students willing to pose questions to their classmates. “There’s something special about a peer group finding its own stories,” says Mrs Byk. “They are reporting on themselves.”

In less than two years, 120 students have signed up to grill their peers, and 300 podcasts are now online. And they are still using Mrs Byk's Clapham home as their office. To celebrate, the pair recently invited 25 of their contributors to a training day. Jane Garvey, the Woman’s Hour presenter, talked about getting into journalism, and the students took to the streets to record their vox pops.

The contributors find teenagers to interview in university common rooms, youth clubs or outside schools at home time. Their conversations cover any topic, ranging from weighty issues such as rape and immigration to favourite venues for Friday nights out.

“If a teenager wearing a beanie is standing in a queue to get a hotdog at a football match, the interview could be about fashion,” says Mrs Merrett. “But it could also be about food, about sport – or even about being bored because they’re queuing.”

Emma Johnson, a 17-year-old who pounces on fellow teenagers sitting alone in cafes and demands to record them on her smartphone, says Podium.me helps to counter inaccurate perceptions about their generation. “There is so much negativity about young people,” she says. “The only stories you see are about young people getting stabbed. But Podium gives us the platform to talk about whatever we want without any stereotype attached. It is our own little space.”

The interviews also tackle issues that friends would not otherwise discuss. “These are people I pass on a daily basis,” says Abla Klaa, a 19-year-old Leeds student. “But I would never have known most of the things I find out. A classmate mentioned she was a refugee so we did a whole feature on that. You learn to appreciate that everyone has a story to tell.”

One contributor interviewed a 17-year-old gambling addict whose uncle had encouraged him to place his first bet. “The gambler said ‘I want to tell my story because I don’t want other boys to go down this route,’” says Mrs Byk. “He has now excluded himself from betting shops by taking his own photograph and going round all the shops asking not to be served. When he finished the interview, he took an enormous sigh and said he felt it wasn’t burdening him any more.”

Unlike other projects inspired by the riots, the not-for-profit “social enterprise” has not applied for Government funding, and the founders cover most of the expenses themselves. They hope to find some private donors, but are willing to continue bankrolling the site, adding more contributors and hosting young bands. They have even signed up a German Correspondent, who will provide regular dispatches on life in his country.

“These people are impressive individuals, and we are giving them a voice,” says Mrs Byk. Then, in an unconscious echo of those Clapham teenagers cleaning up the streets themselves that August day, she adds: “If you feel strongly about something, you have to do it yourself.”